This week’s new comics have dropped, and one of this week’s top books for me happens to be Absolute Batman # 17 by Scott Snyder and guest artist Eric Canete and they bring Absolute Batman into the crosshairs of Pamela Isley aka Poison Ivy. What’s even better is that for a few pages and panels, we get a nod to the massively popular Chainsaw Man anime and manga series created by Tatsuki Fujimoto.
Check out the regular cover above and more importantly, the tribute cover down below…
So in this new story arc, there’s a disturbance somewhere in Gotham City and Batman follows a group of GCPD officers who were sent to investigate. Batman arrives armed with twin chainsaws attached to his forearms.
And to sweeten the pages, we also find out that the officers that were sent ahead have turned into plant zombies who immediately attacks Batman.
Not all the GCPD officers have been turned to zombies as Batman manages to save one officer and sends her away as he continues to climb up to see whose behind all the craziness.
Meanwhile, in case you’re new to the Chainsaw Man franchise, here’s a quick check from the official Wikipedia entry:
Chainsaw Man (Japanese: チェンソーマン, Hepburn: Chensō Man) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Tatsuki Fujimoto. Its first arc was serialized in Shueisha’s shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump from December 2018 to December 2020; its second arc began serialization in Shueisha’s Shōnen Jump+ app and website in July 2022. Its chapters have been collected in 23 tankōbon volumes as of February 2026.
Chainsaw Man follows the story of Denji, an impoverished teenager who makes a contract that fuses his body with that of Pochita, the dog-like Chainsaw Devil, granting him the ability to transform parts of his body into chainsaws. Denji eventually joins the Public Safety Devil Hunters, a government agency focused on combating Devils whenever they become a threat to Japan. The second arc of the story focuses on Asa Mitaka, a high school student who enters into a contract with Yoru, the War Devil, who forces her to hunt down Chainsaw Man in order to reclaim what he had stolen from her.
In North America, the manga is licensed in English by Viz Media, for both print and digital release, and it is also published by Shueisha on the Manga Plus online platform. An anime television series adaptation produced by MAPPA was broadcast from October to December 2022. An anime film, titled Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, premiered in September 2025. An anime adaptation of the Assassins Arc has been announced.
By January 2026, the manga had over 35 million copies in circulation, making it one of the best-selling manga series of all time. In 2021, it won the 66th Shogakukan Manga Award in the shōnen category and won the Harvey Award in the Best Manga category from 2021 to 2023. Chainsaw Man has been overall well-received by critics, who have praised its storytelling, characters, dark humor, and have particularly highlighted its violent scenes within the context of the story.
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